


[WIP Amnesty Not!fic] Panic/SPN fusion

by greedy_dancer



Series: WIP Amnesty [1]
Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Supernatural, Ghosts, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not!Fic, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-29
Updated: 2012-07-29
Packaged: 2017-11-11 00:40:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greedy_dancer/pseuds/greedy_dancer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It had been a fire, of course it had.</i>

</p>
<p> <i>Brendon hadn't known enough at the time,  hadn't heard enough stories to appreciate how little imagination the evil bastards had spent on them. All he'd known was that, in the blink of an eye, he'd lost three bandmates. Jon and Ryan to the actual fire; Spencer to distance and guilt and pain.</i>

</p>
<p> <i>Brendon remembered Ryan's funeral, Spencer's face whiter than the bandages around his throat as Pete hugged him. Pete had been well on his way to getting smashed, muttering drunkenly about Ryan always looking over Spencer's shoulder.</i>

</p>
<p>  <i>How could Brendon have guessed he'd meant it literally?</i>

 </p>
<p>WIP Amnesty! 3k of premise & not!fic ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	[WIP Amnesty Not!fic] Panic/SPN fusion

**Author's Note:**

> This is the Panic/SPN fusion fic I started it in August 2010 for h/c bingo. 3k of it is actually written - the beginning and setting up of things - and I not!ficced the rest so it had an end. 
> 
> It contains things that are pretty typical of the SPN universe: mentions of death (Jon and Ryan are ghosts), dealing with death and guilt over people dying, some disabilities (Brendon walks with a cane, Spencer's vocal chords were irrevocably damaged, rendering him unable to talk - did I mention h/c bingo?), someone puking, talk of people being insane/needing to be committed, and threesomes (Brendon/Spencer/ghost!Ryan). It is also quite obviously unbeta-ed.

It had been a fire, of course it had.

Brendon hadn't known enough at the time, hadn't heard enough stories to appreciate how little imagination the evil bastards had spent on them. All he'd known was that, in the blink of an eye, he'd lost three bandmates. Jon and Ryan to the actual fire; Spencer to distance and guilt and pain.

Brendon remembered Ryan's funeral, Spencer's face whiter than the bandages around his throat as Pete hugged him. Pete had been well on his way to getting smashed, muttering drunkenly about Ryan always looking over Spencer's shoulder.

How could Brendon have guessed he'd meant it literally?

Spencer had tried to bend down to hug Brendon in his wheelchair, but he'd had to stop midway, grimacing and clutching at his ribs. Brendon had said"I'll call you," and gotten a bitter smirk in return."Whatever, I'll email. Fuck, Spencer, you know what I mean."

He had emailed, too, at the beginning. They'd seen each other a couple of times, even. Spencer had given in to his family's begging and moved back to Vegas, and Brendon had to stay in LA for physical therapy, but they'd seen each other at the trial and then at the label, for the band stuff.

Eventually, though, Brendon's leg had started healing and Spencer's vocal chords hadn't, and Jon and Ryan were still gone and it was just too much to deal with, each second spent together a crushing reminder of the others' absence. The gap between messages grew and Brendon didn't write and didn't write and didn't write until it became impossible to write again, even though he still thought about it all the time. All the saved drafts on his phone started with"hey Spence".

Brendon had tried to resume his life in LA, but it turned out that his teenage dream of being chased around by paparazzi got old really fast when it was for real. And now he couldn't even run to avoid them. He'd hung out with Pete a little, but Pete was just as much of a mess as Brendon was, and after a while Brendon had stopped staying with him, for his own sanity. He'd hung out at Shane and Regan's place a lot but even their sympathetic looks had started to grate on him, and he'd stopped coming over for the sake of their friendship.

Finally, he'd packed his stuff and moved to New York and tried to get on with his life. Pete helped him get a job in a recording studio, and between the insurance money and the royalties, Brendon did okay. Morbid irony, Panic was selling more now than it ever had.

So Brendon was doing fine. He went to physical therapy and regular therapy and the PTSD support group – which was nothing like Fight Club, by the way - and got his hair cut once in a while and didn't forget to take out the trash. He got up every morning and went to work, and sometimes he had drinks with people and sometimes he picked up someone at the bar – silently thanking Greg House for making canes and a limp sexy - and got off quickly in the back alley, never bringing them home because that would mean undressing, and well. There was a difference between thinking walking with a cane was hot and seeing what a human leg looked like after severe burns, extensive surgery and skin grafts.

Then he came home to his empty flat and 8 messages from Pete, which he deleted; he unplugged his phone and went to sleep. Weeks passed, and then months, and sometimes he could almost forget for a few days – until he had another dream of being pinned and surrounded by smoke and fire, and jerked awake with his leg in a cramp, breathing into his dampening pillow until it went away. He took some pills and went back to sleep. He went to work. He called his mother regularly. Brendon was doing _just fine_.

Until one day he came home a bit more drunk than usual and forgot to unplug the phone, and when it rang in the early morning, he answered before he realized what he was doing.

**

The flight to LA was uneventful. There were some looks and some hushed whispers but Brendon closed his eyes and turned the volume up on his shitty plane earphones and shut himself inside his own head. Then he had all the time in the world to blame himself.

He'd known Pete wasn't doing well. No one, no matter how sad or concerned, left more than 5 messages every night for weeks without there being something really wrong. Brendon had known that, he'd just chosen to ignore it. He wanted to move on, he wanted to forget, and listening to Pete's drunken ramblings about life and death and Ryan and Jon and feeling like they were always with him was not helping with that.

Also, a less rational part of Brendon resented Pete, wanted to punish him. It's not that it was surprising that, out of all of them, Pete seemed the hardest hit. Pete had been their master at drama, after all. But Brendon remembered watching Pete at Ryan's funeral, drinking with a desperate single-mindedness and muttering to himself, looking increasingly wild and unhinged, until he'd smashed his glass and punched a mirror and Ashlee and Patrick had escorted him outside. Brendon had hated Pete, then, cursed him for once again making things about him. It was Pete who'd been on tv, and in the magazines, going on and on about what a tragedy it was and how hate was destroying the world, and Brendon had been so mad at him for not letting it go. All Brendon wanted was to let go.

Eventually though, the anger had faded, Pete too genuinely distraught and Brendon too exhausted to sustain the feeling. The only thing Brendon was feeling now was guilt and concern, and he hadn't even thought twice before booking his plane to LA. Pete's call had really scared him, the incoherent ramblings obviously drug-induced, and if Pete did something desperate Brendon would never forgive himself.

"I'm not crazy, Brendon, you have to believe me," Pete had slurred."It's just, they're _here_ , they're here all the time, I keep seeing them and I – shut up, shut up, I'm trying to - they're coming, Brendon, they're coming for you, you have to believe me."

"Who's there? Who's coming?" Brendon had asked, but Pete wouldn't stop talking long enough to answer, distracted by someone else in the room with him who apparently wouldn't leave him alone.

"Pete, listen to me," Brendon had pleaded,"where's Ash? Where's Bronx?"

Pete had laughed, long and bitter."She took him to her folks' last week, said she couldn't – that she was afraid – just as well, it's getting too dangerous here."

Pete had stopped talking then, and Brendon had listened to his erratic breathing for a couple of minutes, clutching at the phone; wondering if there was a storm in LA because there were whispers on the line, in the background. After a while he'd hung up, turned on his computer, and booked the first flight to LAX.

**

"Start again from the beginning," Brendon sighed, and pressed his index fingers to the pressure points his acupuncturist had shown him. He could feel the migraine coming on.

"Ryan says you're in danger."

"Pete..." Brendon gave Pete an imploring look. Pete looked exactly like the crazy guys in movies, with his mismatched clothes, his wild hair and scruffy beard, his nervous ticks and shifty eyes. His voice was calm, though.

"And _where_ is Ryan?" Brendon asked, for the third time.

"He's in the other room," Pete said, just as he had the first three times he'd told Brendon.

"Ryan is dead," Brendon pointed out, just as he had the first three times Pete had said it. His heard his voice start to waver. He wondered how quickly the paramedics would be here, once he gave them the call to come and take Pete.

"Yes, I know Ryan's dead," Pete said slowly, in the same voice he used to explain something complicated to Bronx. "He's still here, in the other room. I swear to you, Brendon, I wouldn't joke about this."

Brendon sighed. The migraine was hitting him full-force now, beating against his skull, making it impossible to think. He needed to lie down. He needed his pain meds, but he'd left them in New York. He wished he'd never answered the phone.

"I need to go make a couple of calls," Pete said. "Will you be okay here for a little while? I mean, you can-- you can go in there if you'd like, I just thought-- maybe it would be easier if there was someone with you-- Spencer's flight landed two hours ago, he shouldn't be long now. Yes, yes, it's better that way, you should go together."

Brendon nodded absently. If you'd asked him an hour ago, he would have said that being alone with Spencer would be worse than anything. But apparently it wasn't worse than the thought of having to get Pete committed all on his own. 

"Yes, yes, that'll be good, that'll be better, I think... I didn't want you to be alone, I thought..." Pete kept rambling even as walked down the hall to his study.

Brendon looked around him.

"Ryan?" he called, and then rolled his eyes. He hoped Spencer would be here soon. Maybe the two of them could convince Pete to go willingly.

**

Brendon startled awake when the doorbell rang. He had closed his eyes, just a few seconds, against the light and the pain in his skull, but he must have dozed off, lulled by Pete's whispers coming from the other room.

He only had time to rub his face with his hands and try and sit up in the couch, failing to locate his cane, and Pete was ushering Spencer in.

Spencer raised his hand in greeting. Brendon returned the gesture silently. Pete stared at them, then smiled when Spencer started gesturing, rhythmic and precise. Sign language, Brendon's brain supplied. 

Pete looked back to Brendon with a slightly manic grin. "He says just because he can't talk doesn't mean he's deaf, so you can talk to him. The last one was an insult, by the way." Then Pete disappeared back into the dining room, leaving Brendon and Spencer alone.

There was nothing Brendon could say, though. "Spencer, fuck," he whispered after a couple of seconds of loaded silence.

Spencer looked thin and pale, but his eyes were calm. The scarred skin of his throat looked fragile, pink and slightly ridged. Spencer had still been in bandages the last time they'd seen each other. Brendon curled his hands into fists inside the long sleeves of his shirt. 

They stared at each other for a long while. Guilt, pain, regret and relief were swirling inside Brendon's body, tightening his throat, wetting his eyes, making his stomach clench.

After what seemed like an eternity, Spencer walked up to Brendon's seat, bent down and retrieved his cane from the floor. He brushed his hand through Brendon's hair once, pensively. He was exactly the same, Brendon thought. He even smelled the same, and it was such a comfort, and Brendon had denied himself for so long that he could feel himself getting choked up.

"I'm sorry," Brendon blurted out, and Spencer knelt in front of the couch, took Brendon's face in his hands. 'I'm sorry', he mouthed carefully, before hugging Brendon tight. There were a couple of tears then, Brendon just couldn't stop himself.

"If you guys are finished with the touching reunions," Pete voice called from the dining room, "I have people here who want to see you."

Brendon hefted himself up with Spencer's help, and they walked into the dining room, clutching at each other.

**

The mirrors were the first things Brendon saw. The room was bare of furniture but covered with mirrors, huge ones with gilt frames propped up against the walls and smaller ones in all shapes and sizes, hanging crooked on the walls. There was even one in the shape of Hello Kitty. 

Pete was standing in the middle of the room, reflected infinitely on the walls, like the mirror house at a fair. Brendon and Spencer's reflections appeared in the kaleidoscope of Petes.

"Pete," Brendon started, but Pete hushed him.

"Wait, just wait," he said. Brendon felt Spencer sigh, and then his eye was caught by something, just outside his frame of vision.

"Just wait," Pete said again, looking up at one of the mirrors hanging from the ceiling – the ceiling, god – and when Brendon looked up, he felt his heart skip a beat, and he saw them, sitting cross-legged at the center of the room.

"Hello, Brendon," Ryan said. Jon waved, smiling. Brendon couldn't breathe. His cane clattered to the floor and he took a couple of steps back, stumbled, fell into someone's arms, and then it was all black.

**

He came to to hushed voices, whispering urgently. Pete's voice, and Ryan's. For a second, he thought he was back at Pete's parents' house, having a sleepover, and then it all came back to him.

He barely had time to lean over the edge of the bed before he vomited.

"Oh, fuck," Pete said, rushing to his side. Brendon was still heaving, his empty stomach seemingly doing its best to turn itself inside out. He struggled to catch his breath, tears streaming out of his eyes.

"There, you're okay, there," Pete chanted while he rubbed his back. "Spencer," he called, "can you bring Brendon some water?"

Spencer came in a few moments later, and Brendon rinsed his mouth, drank a little.

"What the fuck, what the _fuck_ , Pete," Brendon gasped when he'd finished. "What the fucking fuck?"

Pete looked slightly apologetic. "I tried to explain, but you wouldn't believe me, and now there's no time to ease you into it. I'm sorry."

"Why aren't you freaking out?" Brendon turned to Spencer, who was now sitting next to Pete on the bed. "Didn't you see them? Didn't you hear them?"

"He says he couldn't hear, but he saw them. He says... he says he's seen Ryan before."

"What?" Brendon exclaimed. "When? Why didn't you tell me? Spencer!"

The look Spencer threw Brendon spoke loud enough that Pete didn't have to translate. 

"Yeah, you're right, I probably wouldn't have believed you either," Brendon conceded. "I still don't believe you, by the way. They're dead." Brendon's mind rebelled against the very notion, but he also knew what he'd seen. He knew what he'd heard. It was Jon, and it was Ryan.

Brendon was terrified.

"Ryan says they're … not ghosts, exactly. Well, I think Jon is, maybe? I think that's why Ryan can talk but not Jon? Ryan tried to explain, something about manifestation of sense-memory and past selves and collective energy, but fuck if it makes any sense to me. They're real, though."

"Pete, fuck, this is insane! I was there at the hospital, I saw-- and then at the funeral, we saw the body, we all did!" 

Pete interrupted him. "I know we did, Brendon. I remember the funeral too, and seeing the body, but I was also seeing Ryan's reflection in my glass and in all the windows, so... Just give yourself a little time to get used to it."

Brendon turned, putting his back to Pete.

"I'll be here when you're ready. We all will be. Just – don't take too much time, okay?" Pete added, before he left the room, closing the door behind him.

Brendon let the darkness take him again, comforting and uncomplicated.

**

The second time he woke up, Spencer was sitting at the foot of his bed. He handed Brendon a glass of water and pointed to the floor, by Brendon's head. There was a bucket there on the floor; someone had evidently cleaned up while Brendon was out. 

"I'm good, I think", Brendon said, and reached for the water.

He felt Spencer's hand on his foot, and looked up. 'Sorry', Spencer was mouthing again. Brendon swallowed thickly. He'd known the doctors had said the damage was too extensive, that Spencer would likely never recover his voice, but he hadn't been around Spencer enough for the reality of it to have sunk in.

"I'm sorry too," Brendon replied. Spencer nodded. He looked at Brendon's leg, raising an eyebrow in interrogation. "It's okay," Brendon answered, even though right now his leg was throbbing insistently. "It's not like I was planning on running any marathons anyway. And you, you've been... Does it still hurt?"

Spencer shook his head. He looked at Brendon again, and jerked his head towards the door.

Brendon's breathing started quickening again, his throat closing, cold chills running up and down his spine. 

This was impossible, it was insane, Brendon went to therapy and he knew the mind could make you do crazy stuff but this was something else. This was the kind of stuff that got you locked away forever. Pete was clinically insane and for some reason Spencer was playing along and now they were both taking Brendon down with them.

He was brought back to reality by the feel of Spencer's hands on both sides of his face. 'Breathe'. Spencer's silent command penetrated through the fog of panic that had descended onto Brendon. He grabbed at Spencer's shirt and buried his face into his shoulder. Spencer's arms closed around him, rubbing up and down his back. Spencer's smell had always been so comforting. 

Finally, Brendon took a couple of deep breaths and looked up, at Spencer's waiting face.

'Ready?'

**

Brendon's mind was reeling. The cold wind was biting into his face as he paced up and down the curb in front of Pete's house. He'd gone outside without a jacket or even a sweater. He didn't care.

Monsters were real.

Monsters were real, and they were after him and Spencer.

Monsters were real, and they were after him and Spencer, and he knew it because the ghosts of his dead friends had come back to warn them.

Fuck.

The butt of his cigarette was burning his fingers. He kept his hand immobile, feeling the sting of the burn between his index and middle fingers. The pain was real. This was real. He chucked the butt on the curb and lit another.

Fuck. _Fuck._

He took a long drag, heard the sound of Pete's front door opening. "Ryan wants to come outside with you," Pete called, "is that okay?"

Fuck.

"Fuck, Pete," he called back, and then a manic giggle made its way up his throat and he said "Fuck, I guess!" He saw Pete disappear back inside. Brendon watched as the door closed on its own. Ryan.

"Cigarettes are evil, you know." Ryan's voice sounded out from the path. "These things will kill you."

Brendon wanted to run, or cry, or laugh some more, but he contained himself as best he could. He was done with the hysterics part of the program.

"You'd know", he croaked back in the general direction of the voice.

Ryan's voice, when he replied, was way closer than Brendon anticipated. He jumped back, plastering himself against a parked car.

"Sorry, sorry," Ryan said. "I forget."

"You forget you're a – a, a ghost?"

"Well," Ryan replied, "it's not like I actually remember being dead, you know? There was the fire, but then I remember the hospital, and then the funeral... I don't feel different. Maybe a bit hazy, like a really bad hangover."

**

[And that's it for stuff that's actually written. Then there would have been the story of how Brendon and Spencer would embark on a road-trip across America, with Pete the crazy medium and Jon the friendly ghost and Ryan the not-really-a-ghost, and go look for a way to defeat the evil that was after them. 

The whole thing had been spinned into a homophobia/anti-emo hate crime for the media, but in reality it had been the actions of a crazy evil cult trying to harness energy to raise a demon (HELLO UNHOLY VERSE YOU ARE IN MY SUBCONSCIOUS). But because of hand-wavy things, the fact that there were actually survivors made the demon weaker than it should have been, and so since the cult leaders and members were in prison, the demon was coming after them itself. 

They all got their Demon Hunting 101 from Zack, whose family was into the business, and had gone back to it himself after being driven away by Brendon.  
They would all hole up in Zach's cabin and Pete would call Mikey Way. "What the fuck is Mickey Way going to know about this?" Brendon would ask. "They're not _actually_ vampires, you do know that, right?" but the joke falls flat because neither Zack nor Pete laugh. Zack just look at Brendon with a blank face, then looks over to where Ryan and Jon's reflections are having another of their silent conversations. He looks back to Brendon with a raised eyebrow and yet another piece of Brendon's world falls apart. 

Zack won't say any more about it and Pete is tight-lipped and silent, so when Spencer puts a stop to Brendon's nagging after an hour, all he's learned is that when the Ways talk about saving lives, they mean it literally.

The first order of business is to make Jon and Ryan visible in more than reflections again because it's way too freaky to look in the rearview mirror and see them, and then look at the backseat and there's only Pete sitting there.

So SOMEHOW that happens, and Jon and Ryan can be seen but Jon still can't talk and none of them can touch anything or affect the reality around them in any way. Brendon's survivor guilt grows another mile or two every time he sees the tapestry through Jon's translucent body. Spencer and Ryan disappear into a room somewhere and work out their issues – Spencer's massive issues at letting Ryan die, mostly – and then they all dry their tears and clear their throats and set about getting rid of the motherfucking demon. 

SO THAT HAPPENS! And over the course of it ~happening they meet many more Bandom cameos, like Hello-Gabe-you-never-said-you-were-a-witch and William-who-has-a-secret-interest-in-ancient-demon-lore and Empires who are werewolves, because apparently that is a thing now. 

And obviously, there would be lots of angst as the live and dead members of Panic try to interact again, and Brendon would get pissed off that Ryan started acting as Spencer's interpreter because for fuck's sake, Ryan was DEAD and he was still the most important person in Spencer's life?? So Brendon would confront Ryan about not wanting to let go, and making things harder for Spencer in the end, because Brendon knows when this is all over Ryan will go back to the afterlife or wherever, and Brendon and Spencer will be left on their own again and have to just start the grieving process over, does Ryan ever think of THAT? And Ryan ends up admitting that he doesn't KNOW what the afterlife is like because he's never BEEN THERE because he was unable to let go of Spencer and he felt too guilty for abandoning him. And everyone feels terrible /o\

But despite all this terrible angst, or maybe because of it, there are also ~feelings that develop – or maybe resurface – between Brendon and Spencer, but it's so awkward because Ryan and Jon are there and they're dead and flaunting love and sex and all these things when they're dead seems like a sucky thing to do. So, pining!

AND THEN THEY DEFEAT THE DEMON! To the terrible cost of Jon's ghostly life. I mean, Jon would sacrifice himself somehow and that would release him into the light – sorry Jon, I wanted this to end in a threesome and not have to bother with other characters anymore, so you had to go, no offense. 

Ryan sticks around as not-quite-a-ghost but he manages to touch things sometimes, and Spencer, Brendon and him work something out, wherein sometimes Ryan possesses one of them or he watches or he just narrates Spencer's thoughts out loud while Brendon and Spencer fuck, and he says he can't go into the light because he's got unfinished business, which is to stick around and make sure his dumbass former bandmates don't get eaten by the monsters if they're going to insist on becoming hunter full time. 

And then they all live creepily ever after. THE END!]


End file.
